Motegi, October 2018. On the grid for the Japanese Grand Prix, Jack Miller’s Ducati is hiding something nobody notices: he will reveal it himself more than a year later. It is the first MotoGP holeshot device known to have been used in a race, and within a few years it would change the way the whole championship starts.

The MotoGP holeshot device is a mechanical system that lowers the bike by compressing and locking the suspension. Lower and more compact, the bike wheelies less, puts more power down and launches better: that is why it was born as a tool for the start, and why it then evolved into a system used on corner exit as well, the ride height device.

How the holeshot device works

The principle is simple; getting it right is much less so. A MotoGP bike pulling away from a standstill tends to lift its front wheel: every centimetre of wheelie is power that never reaches the tarmac. Lowering the rear lowers the centre of gravity, the bike stays glued to the ground and the rider can open the throttle earlier and further.

In the start version, the rider primes the device on the grid with a manual control, on the 2019 Ducatis a lever on the top triple clamp, and the bike stays lowered for the whole launch, until the first braking point, when the suspension unloads and the lock releases. In the race version, the system also works on corner exit and on the straights, where traction decides the lap. These devices are operated mechanically or hydraulically, because the rules ban electronically adjustable suspension and, since 2016, have imposed the same ECU and software on everyone.

From Borgo Panigale to the whole grid

After Motegi, Ducati went a step further. From the Thai Grand Prix in October 2019 Miller used a version that also lowered the rear during the lap, and at the Qatar test in February 2020 the cameras caught it on corner exit. The other manufacturers followed: from the summer of 2021, when Suzuki joined in, all six were racing with a rear ride height device, and in 2022, according to Alex Rins, only Suzuki and Yamaha still had to activate it by hand on corner exit.

Opinions were divided from the start. Some saw the device as yet another stroke of genius from a manufacturer that had already brought aerodynamic wings and, in 2019, the “spoon” under the swingarm, protested by Honda, Suzuki, Aprilia and KTM and then declared legal by the Court of Appeal. Others saw it as an expensive frill that increased the risks and added nothing to the show.

At the Sepang and Mandalika tests in February 2022 Ducati also brought a device that compressed the front on corner exit. This time the rules sided with the critics: on 18 March 2022 the Grand Prix Commission banned, from 2023, any device that adjusts the front ride height while the bike is moving. Devices that act only once, at the start, remained allowed, in other words front holeshot devices.

The 2026 Assen ban and the 2027 rules

That loophole closed in June 2026. After the start incidents in Barcelona and at Balaton Park, to which the specialist press linked the decision, on 22 June the Grand Prix Commission announced a ban on the front holeshot device, in force from the Dutch Grand Prix at Assen. The same statement confirmed the new grid: from the German Grand Prix, in all classes, the forward stagger between one rider and the next in the same row went from three to four metres, and the distance between one row and the next from nine to twelve. We cover it in detail in our analysis of the holeshot, the grid and the manufacturers’ line-up.

For the rest of the 2026 season, the rear ride height device in the race and the rear holeshot device at the start remain legal. Their days are numbered, though: under the new 2027 MotoGP regulations, which cut engines from 1000 to 850 cc, all ride height and holeshot devices will be banned, to contain costs, make starts safer and give more weight to the rider.

Show or laboratory?

Behind a lever on the triple clamp lies a question the paddock has been carrying for years. Is MotoGP a championship that must above all put on a show, or the most extreme arena of technological competition between manufacturers? Riders are divided too: some would like a more genuine, less engineered fight, others defend the pure idea of the prototype.

With 2027, the rules have chosen the first path, at least as far as ride height devices are concerned. It remains to be seen whether the designers’ talent, with one door closed, will find a window as it always has.